All posts in Johnny Li

Recently, Pat wrote an article discussing the need for luck, and deliberately contradicted a prior article in which he said luck doesn’t exist. In short, he says players don’t need luck, yet they do. If you take away the smoke and mirrors, there is no real contradiction. What he describes boils down to improbability vs. variance. They are two different measurements that could perhaps both be thought of as luck, in the sense that we have a minimal amount of control over them. I will explain both concepts in this article. Contradictions Before I begin, I would like to highlight Read more

When a player’s life points reaches 0, he or she loses the game (or in exceptional cases, draws with the opponent). No more turns are played. This fundamental rule of YGO is a no-brainer. However, it has become the source of much confusion. Because games end on the last turn, players develop the thinking that games are decided on the last turn. In most cases, this is incorrect. Pat has preached a philosophy that tournaments are not decided during an event, but rather, are determined in the time leading up to them. His message is not a new one. It Read more

Greetings. This article is an aid to returning players. It presents my method for how to play “catch up” on learning when under time constraints. A returning player’s greatest difficulty is not being able to apply prior knowledge of the game to the current game until he or she reaches a certain threshold of familiarity with the current game. How to go about bridging that gap is the topic of this article. I recently had the opportunity to return from a six-month absence from cards for one brief weekend. Pat told me the ARGCS was making another pass through Texas, Read more

To 0 Nothing To 1 Glow-Up Bulb Infernity Archfiend Raigeki Soul Charge Super Polymerization To 2 Blackwing – Gale the Whirlwind Gorz the Emissary of Darkness Ceasefire The Transmigration Prophecy To 3 Coach Soldier Wolfbark Magician of Faith Formula Synchron Reinforcement of the Army Hi folks. I’m chiming in today with my first article since the WCQ! Shout-outs to everyone I met in Detroit. It was great to talk to you all! Yes, even the guy who stopped me in the restroom… In this article I’m going to do some card appraisal at the micro Read more

A new structure deck was recently released and has already affected the outcome of premier events around the world. I speak, of course, of Realm of Light. I’m going to discuss some of the dynamics when it comes to Lightsworn in this article. First, some history. The concept of a starter deck has come a long way. I remember in the early days of the Pokemon TCG, every starter deck was quite bad (that is, from a competitive standpoint, though I still bought them anyway). When I made the switch to Yugioh, I wasn’t surprised to see the same issue with Read more

Treatise on Competitive Philosophy Contents Book 1: Reasoning Like a Competitor Book 2: Fighting Like a Competitor Book 3: Persisting Like a Competitor Book 1: Reasoning Like a Competitor Abstract In this chapter I continue to discuss mental hurdles to improvement. In chapter 2, I introduced the first two hurdles: cheapness and fatalism. In chapter 3, I discuss hurdles #3 and #4: the netdecking fallacy and the player preference fallacy. I explore the origins of these ideas and identify why they are unreasonable beliefs for the individual who wishes to improve as a competitor. Chapter 3: The Imaginary Code Read more

The Game Outside the Game: Player Management What’s fuzzy my wuzzies? Let me start off with another awful pun. You can’t spell GeARGia without A-R-G. Hey, who threw that shoe at me? You’re not getting it back! When judges answer a player’s call, they are usually operating in one of two domains: rulings or player management. Rulings relate to the technical side of how cards can be played on a table. Player management works, in a sense, with the game outside of the game. Player management addresses all sorts of issues such as tardiness, marked sleeves, rule-sharking (unsporting conduct), slow Read more

Hey everyone, pardon the complete mess of a pun in the title. I couldn’t resist! If the pun was too terrible for you, feel free to print out this article and rip it in two. Then it’d be tear-able! Huh? In this article I’ll go over some basics of negation mechanics. As I’ve interacted with players and readers, I’ve found some gaps in understanding that I’d like to address. As my pun intimated, I will give some applications relevant to the card [ccProd]Evilswarm Exciton Knight[/ccProd]. The lack of a “once per turn” clause on this recent release enables an uncommon Read more

Using Numbers to Guide Deck Building Hi duelists! Recently I visited locals, which I haven’t done in quite some time. A few readers came up and said hi, which I always appreciate. One posed this question to me: How is statistics relevant to Yugioh? I couldn’t give an answer – not because I had nothing to say, but because there is just too much to say. This kind of question is akin to “How do you play Yugioh?” It’s very broad and has all kinds of different answers and applications. Knowing how to collect and use data about the playerbase, Read more